A woman at work wears this VERY strong and extremely offensive scent. I work in a relatively large factory, and I can tell where ever she is or has been by this odor. It was hard to explain it, and the best I could come up with was "Dirt". It smells like dirt. I mentioned it to a few of my coworkers and one of them says "Oh ya, she wears patchouli, it's a hippie smell to cover up pot."

I am never actually around her in any private setting so I haven't been able to approach her about cutting down her usage. I recently changed which factory I was working in so in the first 6 years of my employment I was never around her. But now I work in the same building as her. And my work area happens to be right under the stairway to the office her desk is in. So every day she's constantly in/out of her office this scent lingers in my work area. Just the other day she was apparently exercising during her Lunch hour, and she spent about 10 minutes walking up and down the stairs while I was assembling a machine below. I was almost unable to breath. I honestly can't figure out how the other workers that share her office can stand it.

As an oil incense I do like it... though even then it is rather strong if you use a moderate amount. I hate people who wear it as perfume though, and it's a rather large community of people that use it. Mainly the hippies using it to cover up pot odors, or hair and body odors from not bathing for a few days, that your coworker was right about.

Play Slayer as loud as you can whenever she's near? I heard that helps.

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My commiserations on your plight. Maybe you could email her to explain your bodily reaction to her perfume? I hate overpowering perfumes too. Most synthetic perfumes, even expensive ones, smell like flyspray to me. They make me sneeze, or give me headaches or athsma if I'm stuck with them.

Ironically, I actually like the scent of patchouli. It's probably a nostalgia thing from the hippie commune of my babyhood. One good thing patchouli is for is covering up the smell of incontinence older people and some ill people are cursed with.

Since I'm allergic to almost all supermarket deoderants, I make up my own spray-on with water and some essential oil. For each medium-smallish spray bottle I use *1* drop of patchouli oil to 20 drops of lavender, and 5 drops each of various oils like sandalwood, cedar, myrrh, pepper oil, clove, rosemary, mandarin, etc.

I once messed up and dropped in 5 drops of patchouli oil into one of my mixes by accident. Boy, I made sure not to make that mistake again.

My wife absolutely loves it. The hippy stuff might be close to accurate but she is not a pot head and does not wear it as perfume. Any candle or incense in the house will be a patchouli and or patchouli/sandalwood mix. We had 3 of the plants last spring and it does smell pretty good when you water them and the breeze spreads the aroma around.

As a perfume I think you have the right to punch her, its way too strong of a scent to be worn.